Amalia Lindegren

Amalia Lindegren, (22 May 1814 in Stockholm, dead 27 december 1891 in Stockholm, was a Swedish artist and painter, from 1856 a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts.

Biography

At the age of three, she was left an orphan after her mothers death and adopted by the widow of her alleged biological father, Benjamin Sandel. Her position as a child was somewhat humiliating, as a form of charity object for the upper classes, and in her later work, her paintings of sad little girls is believed to be inspired by her childhood.

Her drawings made the artist and art teacher Carl Gustaf Qvarnström include her as one of the four women accepted as students at the academy in 1849, and in 1850, she became the first woman given an art scholarship form the academy to study art in Paris, which she did at the studies of Coignet and Tissier; she also studied in Düsseldorf and Münich before she returned to Sweden in 1856, were she was elected to the academy.

She painted portraits and genre and was inspired by Adolph Tidemand, Hans Gude and Per Nordenberg and the contemporary German style. The painting she sent home from her studies in Paris was a scene of the drinking of alcohol, which according to the academy were "for a woman a surprising motive" and "This drinking scene bears no traces to have ben painted by a spinster". As a portrait painter, she was recommended for her talent of observation, and her paintings from Dalarna, and her sentimental paintings of sad little girls (which is thought to be inspired by her childhood) was very popular; "Lillans sista bädd" ("The last bed of The Little one") was displyed in Paris in 1867, in Philadelphia in 1876 and in Chicago in 1893.

Gallery

See also

* Anna Maria Thelott
* Ulrika Pasch
* Maria Rohl
* Lea Ahlborn

Sources

* Österberg, Carin et al., Svenska kvinnor: föregångare, nyskapare. Lund: Signum 1990. (ISBN 91-87896-03-6)